 We host our annual holiday party next weekend. That means I'm doing a lot of prep cooking and baking this week. I'm making cream scones, chocolate chip tea cookies, and banana breads. Those are getting frozen and will be defrosted the night before. The day before the party, I'll be prepping spinach balls and an egg dish. And those are just the things that need to be prepped. We also fill the table with veggies, charcuterie, and a very popular cocktail meatball. This year, oven space permitting, the husband wants to add a baked brie. My mantra is that no one should go away hungry. That means I usually end up making WAY too much food. Some things do get eaten completely, but there are usually leftovers to put away. I've finally gotten smart about that. The baked goods can be refrozen. Then, instead of lunch meal prepping for the following week, I just make myself a lunchbox of random goodies. It's less work after a long week of extra cooking, tastes great, and reduces food waste. All wins in my mind! How do you handle party leftovers? 
 
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Short week. Short Wrap. We'll be back to normal next week.
We've still got 6 work weeks left in 2024, but Thanksgiving always seems to signal the beginning of "circle back in the new year" season. At this point in the year, I don't like to take on anything new. My brain is generally done when it comes to "thinky" things. I prefer to finish up odds and ends and start planning - but just planning - for next year projects. It's a lot of email follow-ups, file organizing, list making, and project set up in my Trello. At what point do you decide to coast through the end the year?
One of the perils of being a librarian who was raised by a librarian that happened to work in a museum is that you can never just visit a museum. I always end up assessing things for the how and why behind the exhibit curation. It's a professional hazard. On my trip to St. Louis, I made time to visit the Gateway Arch. My plan was to take the tram to go up to the top, snap a few pictures, and then head back down for a walk around the park. I did not know, until I arrived, that the Arch comes with an underground museum about the history of St. Louis and the westward expansion movement. After my trip to the top, I headed back to the museum to take a look at things. Now, kudos to the curators. They packed in a lot of material in a relatively small space. There was a great mix of adult and kid content with plenty of interactive portions. My main quibble with the content was, as with most museums, the exhibit glazed over the sheer cruelty of westward expansion to the Native American populations. I get that you don't want to scare people or have R-rated material, but we've got to be a bit more honest with our history. Aside from that, the material on display was great. What I could not get over was the layout. The architects clearly designed the underground space to mimic the curves of the Arch. That's cool from a design stand point, but it's difficult to work with as a museum curator. The room layout forces a weird flow on the visitor. Instead of moving in a linear or clearly forward path, you had to loop back across the main hallway several times if you wanted to follow the timeline structure. This put you in the path of school groups and other tourists who were zooming through to get to their tram ride times. The curved design also meant the middle of the "circles" of each loop had to be filled with something. The curators wisely used these for their more interactive or installation style materials, but it meant they felt a touch separated from the main timeline of the rest of the exhibit. I would bet money that the architects of the space never met with the curators and librarians who would need to work with it. That is not uncommon at all. In fact, we had to go through that with my own library. Aside from a few questions sent over email, we never got to have input on our new space. And, now, we have to live with the inherent design flaws. These are the things most visitors never see. But, if you ever think, "Why they heck is that like that?" when you visit a museum or library, now you know why.
When I sat down to write this intro, I couldn't decide if I wanted to despair or rage. The conversations I have in my head are all over the place. In many ways, I'm feeling every stage of grief at once. There are moments I'm numb and I feel utterly detached from reality. There are moments I'm scared which has lead me to make plans to fortify against the coming tempest. There are moments I'm so sad I can't do anything but cry and hold on as the waves of heartbreak roll through me. There are moments of white hot anger. I want to blame everyone and everything that led us to this point. I want to scream from the top of my lungs, throw things against the wall, and march straight up to the Capitol and give them a verbal dose of my wrath. Then an eerie calm comes over me. You can't sustain those heavy emotions for long. It's too exhausting. But that's what has me most afraid. Everything that has happened now feels all too common. And we can't let it feel that way. We can't yield without a fight against the oncoming storm. As a DC resident, I have a lot at risk. We do not have statehood. We do not have voting representation in Congress. Our laws are reviewed by Congress. When that Congress is Republican, they treat us as a hostile enemy and enact policies on our city that we, its residents, do not want. They use the District as a guinea pig to see what they can get away with. In a worst case scenario, they can even revoke our Home Rule, impose a control board, and run things as they want. My literal health and job are at risk. I had my IUD replaced on Friday. That was three years early, but there is a legitimate risk that I lose access to birth control. I'm making a list of all the vaccines I need to get at my next appointment in case my access to those is removed. My husband and I are talking about what happens if I lose my job. I work in an academic library for a public University. An HBCU no less. Funding for higher ed AND libraries is on the chopping block. (If you thought the current book bans were bad...) In a city that may have no control over its own funds, my University could be forced to close. And, I'm renewing my passport just in case. This was not the to do list Kamala Harris was talking about, but it's the to do list I now have. But I refuse to capitulate to what is coming. Too often, we concede to make things easier in the hope that maybe, just maybe, that will be enough. But when we give an inch, we set a precedent. I am not setting that precedent. As a white woman with means, I am going to use my privilege to stem as much of the tide as I can. I am not giving in without a fight.
Are you nervous about the election on Tuesday? Same. Hard same. Here are some things you can do to help keep your election stress and anxiety at bay:
If all else fails, you can always go to bed early and just hope to wake up to the news you want to hear. Whatever you do, do not go down the rabbit hole of state board of election websites. Just trust me on that one. How are you coping?
This week ended with a lot of unplanned solo parenting. Kiddo has been good but it's still tiring. Thankfully, we had stuff already scheduled for this weekend which is helping fill our days. But, tonight, I am going to pour a glass of wine, read some articles I've saved, and zone out to football. How do you recover from a long week?
I got a great email at work this week. A person in our marketing office reached out to say that a publication was interested in featuring our library's new family-friendly study space. This new room is my baby and I preened at the message. When they were remodeling our library, a colleague and I strongly advocated for the inclusion of this space. In fact, it ended up in our former office area. Most of our university's students are part-time. A large part of them have caregiving responsibilities. Students have brought their kids to the library (both in our old space and in our temporary space) since they have no other option. As a mom, I get it. It's a heavy lift to try to get work done while caring for a kiddo. We wanted to make things a little easier. While our library can't provide childcare, at least we can make a more comfortable space for our caregiver students and their young ones. The room has adult workstations, a bookcase full of reading materials, a few toys, a kid-sized table and chairs, and beanbag chairs. In the restrooms nearby, we tossed some step stools to make handwashing easier. Many of the items in the room came from the homes of the parents on our staff. We're halfway through the semester and the students who have used the space love it. Even better, they've given us actionable feedback on how to improve the room to better suit their needs. I get a magical feeling each time I see a kid and their parent in there. Have you ever had a moment where you're really proud of something you've done?
Now that our kiddo is in public school, I'm working on becoming a volunteer. I'm interested in helping in the school library (obviously) and tagging along on a field trip or two. Before I can do any of that, however, I need to be approved. The approval process involved lots of online paperwork, a background check, and, in a surprise to me, fingerprinting. The fingerprinting proved to be the most onerous part of the process. I had to use an approved vendor and they only had a few stations in DC... none of which were near the metro. So, I picked the least worst option and headed their way for my appointment - which of course could not be scheduled before 11am - on Friday. Thankfully, the physical fingerprinting itself was a breeze. I wasn't sure what to expect because the rest of the approval process was so involved. For this bit, my two IDs were check then I did placed four fingers, two thumbs, and four more fingers on a scanner. I signed and was out the door. I was in and out in less than four minutes. What was the last surprisingly easy task you had?
If you were in the path of Hurricane Helene, I hope you are okay. I have family in Florida and South Carolina. They were all impacted in different ways - mostly power outages, lots of rain, and debris down on the ground. But they are safe and that's what matters most. During the storm, we kept in touch on our family text strings. It put my mind at ease to know what was happening on the ground. After the storm cleared, my mom even shared pictures from her morning explorations. By sheer luck, the trees and limbs that came down in their area did not hit anything important. How did you weather the storm?
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